Marx, Myth and Metaphysics China Debates the Essence of Taijiquan Douglas Wile
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Douglas Wile holds a B.A. in Comparative Literature and a Ph.D. in East CONTRIBUTOR Asian Languages and Literatures from the University of Wisconsin. He is currently emeritus professor of Chinese language and Asian Studies from Brooklyn College-City University of New York. His research interests include Chinese sexology, martial arts history and comparative philosophy. Marx, Myth and Metaphysics China Debates the Essence of Taijiquan Douglas Wile DOI ABSTRACT 10.18573/mas.118 This article traces the mythologization, demythologization and remythologization of the origins of taijiquan in China. It describes the association of legendary immortal Zhang Sanfeng with the creation of an ‘internal’ martial art by Ming loyalists during the Ming-Qing transition, the historization of the origins KEYWORDs by progressive intellectuals during the late Republican and Mao eras, and the reemergence of the cult of Zhang Sanfeng taijiquan, Chinese martial arts, in the present period as a kind of fundamentalist revival. intellectual history, ideology, Using anonymous online informants, it documents the recent invented traditions, social surveys appearance of new language and philosophical paradigms – materialism and idealism, physics and metaphysics, and self- defense and self-cultivation – in debates around taijiquan’s CITATION true essence. Further, extrapolating from the latest ideological spectrum surveys, the article attempts to divine correlations Wile, Douglas. 2020. ‘Marx, Myth between views on taijiquan’s essence and general alignments and Metaphysics: China Debates the on a ‘liberal-conservative’ axis. The study concludes with an Essence of Taijiquan’. Martial Arts exploration of the special elusiveness of taijiquan as an object of Studies 10, 23-39. definition and the potential for modern movement science to doi.org/10.18573/mas.118 throw light on its essential uniqueness. MARTIAL Marx, Myth and Metaphysics ARTS STUDIES Douglas Wile Introduction hotly debated between modernizers and traditionalists, became by the second half of the twentieth century a matter of settled history. Owing As China marks its tenth year of annual rejections by UNESCO for to interventions by May Fourth Movement anti-feudalists, and later, the recognition of as ‘intangible cultural heritage’, this leaves official Communist endorsement, pride of progeniture was stripped Korea’s taekkyeon as the sole Asian martial art to receive this honor. from fabled Daoist alchemist Zhang Sanfeng and awarded to late-Ming Now, adding insult to injury, both Japan and Korea are poised to apply local garrison commander Chen Wangting. However, in the current for recognition of their own national versions of taijiquan. This revives ‘reformed and open’ martial arts marketplace, there is no monolithic painful memories of similar rebuffs for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, standard of authenticity or truth, with a return to localism, lineage and which included both judo and taekwondo, and karate’s inclusion for even myth. 2020 (now 2021). Only sumo wrestling, taekwondo and capoeira enjoy the status of ‘national sports’ in their respective birthplaces, Today, in the midst of heated controversies over whether martial arts while China’s unofficial national sport is table tennis. The grounds for should be promoted for health or self-defense, and which style is most rejection of China’s UNESCO application has been that the language is effective in combat, it is easy to forget those periods when its having ‘too vague’ and a tendency to ‘define concepts with other concepts’. This any role in a modernizing China was called into question. During the highlights the urgency the Chinese feel to gain recognition for their early twentieth century, some progressives saw it as a feudal remnant, origination claims and to more clearly define the essence of the art. rife with magical thinking and, at best, irrelevant for the modern battlefield. During the Cultural Revolution, Red Guards condemned all In the twentieth century, the Nationalist overthrow of the Manchu physical education as ‘bourgeois decadence’. Morning calisthenics were dynasty, the Nationalist-Communist united front against Japan, and replaced by ‘Little Red Book Exercise’ and ‘Little Red Book Martial Art’: the Communist victory in the Civil War determined that China would recitation of passages from Quotations of Chairman Mao with expressive enter the modern era as an independent nation, with a one-party gestures. Now, with global acceptance of taijiquan’s benefits for health state and socialist economy. Marxism would replace Confucianism and self-development, it has become a source of national pride and and the Nationalist Party’s ‘Three Principles of the People’, and a ‘cult private profit. of personality’ would grow up around Chairman Mao, surpassing even that of Generalissimo Chiang. China’s unique culture would no Following Mao’s death in 1976 and overthrow of the ‘Gang of Four’, longer be the gift to humanity of mythological figures like the Yellow through Deng Xiaoping’s 1978 policy of ‘restoring order’ and ‘reform Emperor, God of Agriculture, or Fu Xi, but a product of the genius of and openness’, to today’s ‘China dream’, ‘go global’, ‘socialism with the Chinese people, who would now take credit and rightful ownership. Chinese characteristics’, ‘harmonious society’, and ‘civilized society’, China in the twenty-first century has become a mixed economy of state- After 1949, both the means of material production and intangible owned and private enterprises. This duality plays out in the martial cultural heritage were nationalized. Thus, literary Chinese would arts marketplace as the parallel development of standardized forms and be preserved, but the baihua vernacular would become the style of national sports academies with a resurgence of legacy-brand family everyday written communication; local dialects would be preserved, but styles and local for-profit taiji tourism. While the former fault lines putonghua (Mandarin) would become the lingua franca; the logographic between mythologizers and historicizers reflected Nationalist versus (characters) writing system would be preserved, but strokes simplified; Communist sympathies, today’s divisions are not so easily reducible Hanyu pinyin would replace the myriad Western romanization systems, to a simple one-dimensional political binary. Current debates are no and the whole country would go metric. Illiteracy would be ‘swept away’ less acrimonious, but new language now dominates the discourse: (saomang) through universal education. In the realm of martial arts, materialist versus idealist, physics versus metaphysics, and self- family styles would be preserved, but standardized and brought under cultivation versus self-defense. the aegis of national physical education institutes. Secrecy, mythology, and claims of invincibility and immortality would be banished, replaced by openness, history, and science. Taijiquan’s popularity in China, its global dissemination and its reputation as a repository of the quintessence of Chinese culture has made it a kind of contested ‘Holy Land’, fought over by shifting factions in China’s ongoing culture wars. Taijiquan’s origins, once 24 Fall 2020 MARTIAL Marx, Myth and Metaphysics ARTS STUDIES Douglas Wile Myth versus History to throw out the bathwater: charlatanism, superstition and professional jealousy. An iconoclast but no nihilist, Tang was a lawyer by trade, who One would think that Tang Hao’s, ‘Let us rise up together in the great knew the difference between fact and fiction, and how to build a case task of establishing Chinese martial arts on a scientific basis’ [Tang based on historical documents and field investigations. His 1930 Shaolin Wudang kao was a shot over the bow to the conservative martial arts strengthening and hence of national salvation. May my people rise community and established him as the Lu Xun of Chinese martial arts again!’ [Zheng 1946; Wile trans., 1982: 6] would make them natural history – a man prepared to wash China’s dirty linen of self-delusion allies in the movement to promote Chinese martial arts. Both were and superciliousness in public and let the slings and arrows be damned. born during the waning days of the Manchu dynasty and lived through His Shaolin Wudang kao exploded myths and exposed ideological fault the Nationalist Revolution, Communist Revolution, Civil War and lines. It threatened the mystique and rice bowls of professional martial Japanese invasion. For perspective, American readers should imagine artists and polarized martial arts partisans and policy makers. Although themselves living through the Revolutionary War, Civil War, World no one dared to say this out loud, some may have noted that Japan was Wars I and II, Korean War, and Vietnam War, all in one lifetime, able to reconcile emperor worship and Shinto war gods with radical and in your own backyard (except that the Chinese Civil War lasted modernization of the economy and military; why deny China its Daoist 20 years, and the Japanese invasion lasted 50). Both Zheng and Tang immortal Zhang Sanfeng and Chan Buddhist patriarch Bhodidharma? served in state-sponsored martial arts institutes, but gravitated to opposite poles of the political spectrum and ultimately died on opposite The association of legendary Daoist alchemist and immortal Zhang shores of the Taiwan Straits. Zheng served as personal physician to Sanfeng with the creation of taijiquan begins with late Ming dynasty Madame Chiang and cultural ambassador from the ROC to the Chinese